Defi Farm #9 - June 19th Weekly Update

This is the time to experiment

Author

Andy Page
June 19, 2022

Hi everyone,

The list of people getting these weekly emails grew to the point where I figured I would finally set up an actual newsletter. Hope this looks spiffy✨. These will also probably start coming from a different email address.Hard to find good news in crypto these days and there seems to be an unlimited supply of bad news. Let's dive in 🤿Over the past 7 days:SPY: -3.72% 😦BTC: -30.5% 😦 😦ETH: -30.9% 😦 😦 😦I hope everyone is doing alright.Today, I don't really want to spend a lot of time talking about all the bad stuff that's happening (Celsius, Three Arrows Capital, DeFiance Capital, large funds and wallets on the edge of liquidations on Aave and Maker, etc). There are a lot of rumors, some of which are probably true, but no one really knows the full extent of what's happening. There are plenty of good threads you can find across CT (crypto twitter).

I think it would be helpful to spend some time going over:- Using this time to experiment, explore, create, and play as much as possible- Interesting news + newly launched projects- An interesting farming strategy of the week

Using this time productively

Over the past few weeks, I've had more time to start playing around with defi, web3, and NFT things that I didn't really have time for before. Here's just a small list of some of the things I've been doing:

  • I bought a few ENS domains for potential side projects that I'll probably never get to

  • For my brother's birthday, I taught him how to set up MetaMask, add the Harmony One network, and then gave him two hero NFTs so that he could start playing DefiKingdoms.

  • I've had more time to listen to workshops and attend office hours at Invisible College. A web3 native school with NFT-gated access.

  • I bought a Portals Citizenship NFT pass, explored their metaverse, and met some strangers in their virtual downtown.

  • Experimented making POAPs and Kudos and sending them

  • I created a Moonbase profile. Moonbase is pretty interesting. It's similar to Patreon - if you hold a creator's NFT you get access to exclusive content. But unique to Moonbase, a creator's early followers also get paid a small % of the creator's fees.

  • Experimented making a short "course" via 101.xyz

  • Donated to a few gitcoin grants

I'm also focusing on building/creating during this time.

  • I'm going to continue to host meetups like this one in the metaverse and hopefully help people connect

  • I launched a podcast where I'll start to interview web3 founders and builders. I already have the first three recordings scheduled.

  • I'm currently working on buildings some async defi education resources and in ~ 1 or 2 months when I have some more time will start teaching a small synchronous course

Interesting stuff that happened this past week

Here's a long list of cool companies I came across this week (not necessarily ones that launched this week). Some are crypto-native, some of them are web2 building for web3, all of them, I thought were cool enough to share.

  • Streamflow (link) - token vesting and payroll streaming for web3 teams

  • Kairos (link) - platform that helps anyone create NFTs, sell them, and provide real world NFT utility

  • Paper (link) - allows users to buy/mint NFTs with a fiat credit card

  • Sparkwave (link) - community insights and tools with web3 community managers

Interesting Farm of the week

I think one of the most interesting farming strategies that you can set up right now is on Algorand. Here would be the setup for a delta-neutral position. (This does carry some, though small, IL risk. If this is something you choose to do, make sure you understand what IL is and how to mitigate it.)Step 1. Deposit USDC on Algofi, (this currently pays out about 5%)Step 2. Borrow equal amounts of ETH and Algo against your USDC. (Keep an eye on your health factor!!)Step 3. Take your Algo and ETH and provide liquidity to the ETH/ALGO pool on Pact.fi. This will earn ~58% APRThis strategy would give you an effective rate of 38.25% APR on your USDC.Things to keep in mind:- Smart Contract risk (interacting with Algofi and Pactfi)- Potential risk of liquidation (you'll have to actively watch your health factor and make sure that if Algo or ETH start to pump, you use your LP position to pay down your loan)- Potential IL risk.

Last thing

If you made it this far and you're still actively engaged and experimenting in crypto/web3/defi/NFTs you've outlasted a lot of people. Here's a fun little non-NFT JPEG badge you can keep for yourself.

That's all I have for this week! Stay safe out there and as always, stay yielding!

Very best,Andy